Fearless

CHAPTER 1

I’M GOING TO KICK YOUR TAIL

I worked my way through the sea of people on the sidelines at U.S. Bank Stadium until I reached the field, where that big white border provides sanctuary. Finally, the Super Bowl. All of my time in the NFL—fourteen years as a quarterback, two years as an offensive quality-control coach, two years as a quarterbacks coach, three years as an offensive coordinator, and two years as a head coach—had prepared me for this day.

I spotted New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick down on the other end of the field. Eventually we connected at midfield and had a chance to say hello. I had met him at league meetings, but we’d never really had any conversation before this.

He congratulated me on the season and said it was great to be in this game. I said the same thing right back to him. Then he complimented our team and said, “I went back and tried to find some games you were losing in; I couldn’t find many.” I told him there were plenty of times.

But as much respect as I had for him, I was looking at him thinking of all the hard work it took to get to the Super Bowl, and all the doubters and naysayers who said our season was over after we lost our franchise quarterback. I was thinking of the sacrifice of long hours by my coaching staff. I was thinking of the players who committed to taking ownership. And then I thought the Patriots had no idea what the championship was about to them. I looked at him and thought, “I’m going to kick your tail, definitely going to kick your tail.”

Everyone thinks I’m this soft-spoken, nice guy, but I have a highly competitive nature and an underdog mentality. I probably learned that underdog mentality being around people like Andy Reid, Brett Favre, and Dan Marino. They are ultimate competitors, and when that whistle blows, all gloves are off. I walked away to tend to my team, and Coach Belichick went to do his thing. It was the calm before the storm.

It seemed like a long time since we had played our last game. We had started game planning for the Patriots thirteen days earlier, the day after we beat the Vikings in the NFC Championship Game. We put the entire game plan together early that week, and then had a normal few days of practice. We even put the pads on.

Then we headed to Minneapolis on Sunday, a day earlier than we had to. I texted four of our strong leaders—Carson Wentz, Malcolm Jenkins, Jason Kelce, and Nick Foles—and asked them if the guys were feeling a little tired. They said they were and suggested we not do anything on Sunday. I thought it made sense, so I gave them the day off. The players were grateful.

It was back to work on Monday. We had meetings and walk-throughs in a ballroom at the hotel so they could get up and moving again. That night, the NFL kicked off Super Bowl week. It was a big media event with both teams at the event, and we all fielded questions. It was important to get back to routine, so I didn’t change the schedule and treated Tuesday like a normal in-season day. We had meetings, did walk-throughs, everything as usual.

I did, though, give them enough time to enjoy the Mall of America and the NFL Experience and to see the sights around town. When I went to the Super Bowl with Green Bay back-to-back years as a player in the nineties, that was something Mike Holmgren allowed us to do. He let us enjoy the whole week and check out the host cities. Some of the parties were late at night, so we couldn’t attend those, but he allowed us to go out and show our faces. Some of our players had dinner with Patriots players, or they ran into them someplace and hung out. Maybe they weren’t buddy-buddy with them, but they could talk and have a laugh. I don’t have a problem with that. It’s all part of the scene.

On Wednesday, we had more meetings at the hotel, then took a bus to the University of Minnesota for practice. Jim Schwartz, our defensive coordinator, had been to a Super Bowl with the Tennessee Titans, and he recommended not putting in the whole game plan the first week. So the coaches and I saved about 10 percent of the game plan to put in that first week. This way it kept the players’ minds engaged as we headed into the game.

We analyzed third down, red zone, two minute, four minute, fourth and goal, fourth and one, all those situations, so there was tweaking all week. We took eight or nine plays out and replaced them with those we had run earlier in the season, thinking that they would be more effective. Even though the players were familiar with the plays, reinstalling them in Minneapolis kept things from getting stale, especially for the quarterbacks.

During the season, I usually spend most of the week leading up to a game in the quarterback meetings, but having the two weeks to prepare gave me the freedom to sit in on other position meetings. I sat in with my o-line and defensive units. It was important for the players to see me there, especially the defensive guys, whether it was in the rooms or during practice at their end of the field. As much as possible, I wanted to work with all the players.

I also called around for advice. More than anyone else, Andy Reid has helped me develop as a coach. We were together in Green Bay, Philadelphia, and Kansas City. He had Super Bowl experience, coaching the Eagles against the Patriots in Jacksonville. Among the things we talked about was preparing the team for all the downtime in the pregame and at halftime. That was interesting, and not something I had thought of.

Halftime during the Super Bowl is thirty minutes, as opposed to twelve minutes during the regular season. So during our Wednesday practice, I stopped it to take a thirty-minute time-out, simulating halftime in the locker room. I told the players to get off their feet and refuel and recharge, and the coaches to do their thing with game-plan adjustments and then to regroup with their units. Then we returned to the field and finished up practice. Some of the guys complained about their day being extended, but they got over it when they understood the reasoning.

Some players are able to take their games to the next level when the stakes are raised. Alshon Jeffery probably had his best week of practice all year. Nobody noticed it, but it was a big deal to us. I talked to Mike Groh, who was our wide receivers coach at the time, about how Alshon was practicing better and playing faster. He was showing up and paying attention to the details. He wasn’t making any mental mistakes either, and he brought a positive attitude, talking up and cheering on his teammates.

We were excited to see what Alshon would do in the game. New England was a single-high coverage team, and they liked to go bump and run, and press. We knew Stephon Gilmore was going to be on him all day. Gilmore and Alshon were teammates and roommates at South Carolina, and Alshon was in Stephon’s wedding party. So they knew each other pretty well. Gilmore can be a physical cornerback, so there was going to be contact. We didn’t mind because Alshon’s a big, tough guy. We tried to imitate that physical style in practice. Alshon was able to release at the line of scrimmage, get to the top of his route, get physical, and run that dagger route, which is one of Nick Foles’s favorites. While we had seen Alshon nail it in games from time to time, we had never seen him do it so well in practice. On Thursday, he also ran some nice slants, which is one of the routes he likes to run. We have some third-down plays for when the defense is in man coverage; that week, we worked some combinations with Alshon, and again he was flawless, with Nick hitting him on time.

Then on Friday, which is red-zone day, Alshon really perked up. We had a quick fade route where he leaned on the corner, hit his stride, and Nick threw a ball that was a little high. To see him time and elevate his jump over the top of Sidney Jones was one of those “wow” moments. Sidney is going to be a good player for us, and he played the technique as best as he could, but Nick put the ball where only Alshon was going to get it. It was another one of those times when you knew this guy was in the zone and focused. I couldn’t wait to see him go against Gilmore in the game and watch everything unfold.

Of course early in the Super Bowl, Alshon made that great catch in the back of the end zone for a touchdown. He had a great game with three catches for seventy-three yards, and made some big plays for us. What we saw in practice carried over into the game. He stood out.

It wasn’t just Alshon. Nelson Agholor had a good week too. And the offensive line as a unit was executing really well. I hadn’t seen that type of speed from our offense all year in practice. Maybe it was because of the big game and emotions were running high. The defense was the same way, with the defensive line rolling off the ball, linebackers flying, and the secondary making plays on the ball. I saw the timing, the pass rush. Fletcher Cox and Derek Barnett with their moves, Chris Long showing off his power and quickness. Those things were flashing. In the grind of the season, sometimes you’re just trying to get through the practice. But here, when it mattered most, the team put together some of the best practices I’d seen in a long while.

The two weeks weren’t perfect, though. Far from it. I bet we had a total of a dozen players and coaches, myself included, who were sick. The flu, or flulike symptoms, was running rampant in our team. I was sick right after the Minnesota game and had it for four days. I still wasn’t feeling well the first couple of days in Minneapolis, with chills, body aches, and a fever of 100.6 degrees. I took a flu test along with a bunch of the other guys, and mine was negative. But the bug was going around. Jim Schwartz had it twice. Duce Staley, my running backs coach, had it. Nelson Agholor fell sick on Thursday before the game. Tim Jernigan couldn’t practice Wednesday or Thursday and stayed back at the hotel. Player after player, coach after coach. All I could think was, “Oh boy, great, this is what we need, everyone getting sick with the biggest game of our careers—of our lives—coming up.”

We had a good time away from football too. My wife, Jeannie, flew out with me, and the kids came out later in the week. Friday night was fun: the Eagles rented out the Hard Rock Cafe in the Mall of America. We had a real entourage: my mom; Jeannie; our three boys—Drew, who was twenty-three, Josh, twenty, and Joel, fifteen; Drew’s girlfriend, Ann Marie; my sister, Cathy; Jeannie’s two brothers and their wives; and family friends from New Jersey and Kansas. We had about twenty of us at the party. Our head of security, Dom DiSandro, hung around with us for precautionary reasons. We had a private area for Eagles family and friends where drinks and appetizers were served. When friends of the team are involved, they often want to get autographs or pictures, so we went to this cove where we were tucked away. There was a band and everyone was having fun.

The Mall of America is so huge that it holds an amusement park, Nickelodeon Universe, and the boys, of course, told me I needed to ride on the roller coasters with them. I love roller coasters. “You’re an NFL head coach and it’s the Friday before the Super Bowl,” I thought. “You’re supposed to represent the Philadelphia Eagles and set an example.” And then I said to myself, “Let’s go. What the heck!”

Avatar Airbender was my favorite. I rode that and Rock Bottom Plunge three times. And then I rode Fairly Odd Coaster twice. They let us stay a little later for a couple more rides after they shut down at 10:00. It was fun to enjoy the moment with the boys. I came back to the party, and Dom asked where I’d gone. I said, “Dude, you gotta come on this ride!” He was shocked.

Before the NFC Championship Game, Brett Favre told me if we made it to the Super Bowl he’d be glad to talk to the team. Brett and I played together for the Packers for eight years and became very close. I told him I would hold him to it. So on Saturday morning, he came by the hotel to speak to the guys. It was supposed to be a surprise, but there are spies everywhere. Things got out, and the next thing I knew one of the players said, “Hey, I hear you’re having Brett Favre come talk to us.” Oh well.

Brett spoke for about ten minutes, sharing the importance of knowing the opponent. He said we needed to be aware that the Patriots understood what a Super Bowl was like and that they could control their emotions better as a result. He told some stories about our Packers team in our first Super Bowl, how we were juiced up and emotional. Yet we needed to learn how to deal with the long stretches of time when we wouldn’t be playing. As big a stage as the Super Bowl is, there’s so much time at pregame, so much time at halftime, and so much downtime in the couple of weeks leading up to it. He put it all into perspective for the guys.

After he finished, I said a couple of words to the team before we went about our day. Then I closed by saying, “We will win this game.”

I had been saying that to the team every day since the postseason began. It wasn’t, “We will do everything we can to win this game.” It was, “We will win this game.” I thought if I said it enough, we would believe it. We felt we would win our games as the season went along, but I never verbalized it before the playoffs. While we believed we were a better team in most of our games, anything can happen in the postseason. I needed something to give them the confidence. After all, people weren’t giving us the respect that we had earned. We were the number-one seed in the NFC, with home-field advantage throughout the playoffs, and we had defeated the Atlanta Falcons, the previous year’s NFC champions, we had beaten the Minnesota Vikings, the league’s number-one defense, and now we were in the Super Bowl. Yet there were those who felt we didn’t belong on the same field as the Patriots.

I can honestly say by the time I was standing on U.S. Bank Field, I had no doubts that we would win. I had watched a lot of tape, including the previous year’s Super Bowl when the Patriots came back against the Falcons. In fact, I reviewed a lot of games where the Patriots were losing and came back, focusing on their ability to pull it off. What did I learn? It wasn’t about the Patriots as much as it was about the teams they were playing. Their opponents weren’t playing for sixty minutes. They weren’t finishing. They weren’t executing their offense. Play callers became more conservative and stopped being aggressive.

A great example was the AFC Championship Game. When the Jacksonville Jaguars had a four-point lead on New England and had the ball with fifty-five seconds left in the first half, they took a knee and ran the clock out. I was watching the game from our locker room at Lincoln Financial Field as we were getting ready to play Minnesota. I sat there thinking, “You have got to be kidding me right now.” They had two time-outs and close to a minute left. They could have at least tried for a field goal. They took it out of their quarterback’s hands, and they didn’t give it to their big back, Leonard Fournette. I thought, “If they lose this game, this is why.” Sure enough, they would go on to lose the game.

It made me mad because Jacksonville had New England right where they wanted them. I was screaming at the television in my office. When they knelt right before halftime, inside I was like, “I’ll never do that.” It fueled me. Against the Vikings later that day, we had twenty-nine seconds left in the first half and three time-outs. Instead of taking a knee, I called for a screen pass to Jay Ajayi to the sideline, a pass to Zach Ertz up the sideline, another pass to Ajayi, and then we kicked a field goal to grab three points. All in twenty-nine seconds. That’s how I wanted to play the last minute of a half—with an aggressive mentality.

So as we prepared for the Super Bowl, I told my guys, “Let’s talk about this New England mystique. There is no such thing. If we play for sixty minutes, if we own our jobs, if we do the things we’re supposed to do, play error-free, play mistake-free, play loose, play passionate, all the things you’ve done all season, we’re going to win this game. I’m speaking to myself and I’m speaking to everyone in this room—we will win this game. There’s no mystique in New England. Tom Brady is a great quarterback, one of the greatest of all time. Bill Belichick will be in the Hall of Fame; he’s a great coach. These two together have won a lot of championships, and I respect that. As a former player and as a coach, I respect that because that’s what we all strive to do. We all want the five, six, seven titles. We want to be in this game every year. But it’s not about mystique; it’s not about Tom Brady. The teams they played just quit; they shut down.”

The night before the Super Bowl, I slept like a baby, going to bed a little after 11:00 and waking up around 8:00, feeling confident and calm.

At the stadium, my two older sons, Drew and Josh, were on the field with me, and they would stay on the sideline during the game. For me as a dad it was cool seeing them out there Snapchatting, taking selfies and pictures, and all of that. They had joined me on the field before during regular season games, but in this environment, it was a first. I wanted them to enjoy it with me. Who knows if you’re going to get back out there ever again?

Then it was back in the locker room as the game grew near. At this point, I felt the knot in the pit of my stomach. Truth be told, if you don’t get nervous for a game like this, you’re not normal. But this was more nervous than I had ever felt. It was overwhelming. I thought, “Man, I’m in the freaking Super Bowl.” I wanted to pinch myself.

Once the ball was in the air, it was all about the game. We took a 9–3 lead on Alshon’s touchdown. Then LeGarrette Blount had a big run for a touchdown to put us up by twelve. You talk about a guy that’s been to two Super Bowls with the Patriots, an unselfish player, who had a big role in creating our success this season—that’s LeGarrette. He stood next to me during the game. He kept saying over and over, “They can’t beat us. They can’t beat us.” I’d tell him he was right. To me, having exchanges like that, as brief as they are, in the biggest game of our careers, said something. You could hear the players on the sidelines go, “Let’s just keep it moving, we’re in a good spot, and we’re going to be fine.” People didn’t read about these conversations, but as the head coach, hearing these words made it special. It’s the culture I’ve established that they believe in themselves, and that they trust in each other.

In the course of our preparations, I asked LeGarrette and Chris Long, our former Patriots, about Belichick and what to expect. “You’re going to have to make adjustments at halftime,” they said. “He’s going to adjust, so you’re going to have to adjust. He’s a smart coach; he’s intellectual.” He really does make adjustments. If you watch games, he takes over in the second half. It could be a terrible first half, but in the second half they catch their stride on both sides of the ball. LeGarrette and Chris wanted to avoid talking about him too much, though. They wanted this to be about us and what we did. That was the other message. They said, “Who cares what he does? Let’s go win the game. This is about us. Let’s go win this game for us.”

With thirty-eight seconds left in the first half, we ran a play called Philly Special that helped us do just that. Press Taylor, who was my offensive quality-control at the time, is responsible for reviewing NFL games and college games and looking for special gadget–type plays. When we see a good one, we save it and put it in a folder.

In 2016, the Chicago Bears used the play on a third down against the Vikings at the two-yard line. They executed it perfectly. I said, “That’s the play that’s going to win us a game.” I just had to find where we would put it in. We had Trey Burton, a University of Florida baseball guy and a former high school quarterback who was a third tight end for us and who played a lot. He could throw. And we had Corey Clement, an undrafted rookie running back who we used in the red zone. He’d be with Nick Foles in the backfield.

The week of the NFC Championship Game, I thought we needed something extra, so I reviewed the folder for special gadget plays and added Philly Special to the red-zone game plan. Since it was a new play, I wanted to get as many reps in as possible, so we practiced it during our walk-through Thursday and ran it again live in practice on Friday.

The first time we did it, Trey threw a heat-seeking missile to Nick. That wasn’t going to work. “Trey, you can’t throw it that hard,” I advised him. “Throw a grenade to him. Just float it to him and let it come down in his hands.” We ran it again and then he overthrew it, sailed it five yards over Nick’s head. At that point I said, “Okay, got it, let’s move on to the next play. I don’t think I’ll be calling this.”

Still, even though we had yet to get past the Vikings, Nick Foles and I would occasionally talk about the play. “How cool would it be if I call Philly Special and it’s the game winner in the Super Bowl?” But then I reconsidered. “No, if I call it, it’s going to be the game winner against Minnesota.” As it turned out, we never used it in that game because the situation didn’t come up.

When we built the game plan for the Super Bowl, Frank Reich, my offensive coordinator, and I looked over the plays we didn’t use in the NFC Championship Game that we could carry over to the Super Bowl. Philly Special was one of them. We now had a couple of weeks to look at the play on film, look at our practice tape, work adjustments, and make corrections. We had to iron out the verbiage, the cadence, and a lot of other things. But as coaches we are often paranoid, especially when we are being watched as closely as we were during Super Bowl week. You never know who is watching practice, and we didn’t want it to be talked about publicly. So we didn’t rep it the entire week at practice. We did review it a couple of times at the hotel, in walk-throughs, and watching it on film.

Now, back to the game. There are thirty-four seconds left in the first half, and we are fourth and goal at the one-yard line. I told the team we were going for it, and then we took a time-out. I’m sure everybody watching thought I had changed my mind and had decided to attempt a field goal. But I hadn’t. When Nick came over during the time-out, I was reviewing the red-zone, fourth-down, and two-point menus.

“How about Philly Philly?” he asked. That’s what he called Philly Special. My eyes never hit on it because I planned on using it on the two- or three-yard line, not the one-yard line. I thought for a second and said, “You know what, let’s do it.”

I called the wristband number, 122 (Nick wore a wristband on which each play was typed, corresponding to a number). I never verbalized the play, so none of my coaches knew I’d called it. LeGarrette Blount came up over my shoulder and whispered, “What do you got?” I pointed to the red-zone section of my call sheet and told him. Then John DeFilippo, our quarterbacks coach, called out the play and all the other coaches said, “Holy crap, it’s Philly Special. It’s Super Bowl time and it’s Philly Special.” Of course, the rest is history. Corey took the snap, pitched to Trey, and Trey threw a perfect pass to Nick, who was wide open for the touchdown that put us up 22–12.

You hear people say, “Man, that was the gutsiest call in Super Bowl history,” and I just shrug. I trust my players. Nick made a suggestion, and I agreed to it. I could have just trumped it, but then again, earlier I was standing next to Bill Belichick at the fifty-yard line and thinking about how I was going to beat his tail. The play was awesome. It worked great.

Some have said that if the players didn’t execute, I’d be on the street now, looking for a job. But I never thought about that. You can’t. If I had, I wouldn’t have called the play.

Since they knew what to expect after we rehearsed it on Wednesday, the guys were prepared for the longer halftime. Usually, with a twelve-minute halftime you’re in and out, with barely enough time to sit, think, and go to the bathroom before you’re right back out there for the second half.

When we first went into the locker room, I was in Mike Zimmer’s office with the offensive staff, and we were rushing through everything and talking fast. I stepped in and said, “Time-out. We have thirty minutes to do this. Let’s relax. Let’s take a deep breath and go back through it.” It was a little more civilized then. The players were able to recharge and prepare for the second half, which was good. We needed to enjoy the moment.

In the second half, the Patriots kept coming, as we figured they would. Thankfully, Nick threw a touchdown pass to Corey on our first possession of the third quarter to give us some breathing room.

One of the only mistakes Nick made in the game was calling the wrong play on a third-and-one play on what turned out to be the game-winning drive for us in the fourth quarter. I called wristband number 52. Nick looked at his wristband and mistakenly called the play that was right above it, 50. It was a play-action pass, which wasn’t the right play.

We brought Torrey Smith in motion, then slid him back into the left flat. The defensive end hung, and didn’t rush off the edge. Well, Torrey beat him, and Nick threw a dangerous lob pass over his head. Torrey caught it, but was tackled for no gain. Nobody on the coaching staff even noticed Nick called the wrong play until after the game. I was already thinking about the next play, so I didn’t even realize it. When they told me about it and I went back to look at it, I thought about how disastrous that could have been if the pass had been intercepted.

Nick was brilliant in the game. A lot of people on the outside thought he couldn’t fill Carson Wentz’s shoes and wondered if he could lead us to a championship. When we grade players, especially quarterbacks, it’s based on decision-making—did he make the right read? And we look at timing and accuracy. In that game Nick was almost perfect in the way he executed the offense, as well as in his mentality. He was under control, yet he played as fearlessly in his decisions and throws as I tried to be with my play calls. His grade was the highest of any player on our team for the game. By far. It also was the highest of any player on our team for the season.

I’m sure it surprised some people. But it didn’t surprise me. I knew Nick, so I had faith. Some of his teammates might not have felt as confident in him as I was. There was a percentage of guys who doubted because they didn’t know him. But then there were a handful of guys who did know him. They thought, “We’re going to be fine. Nick’s going to be good. He’s not a rookie, he’s a veteran guy, he’s going to do it.” Some of the guys had played with Nick when he was here with Chip Kelly and Andy Reid. Brandon Graham, Fletcher Cox, Vinny Curry, Brent Celek, Jason Kelce, Jason Peters—all those guys were brought to Philly by Andy. So they knew Nick. They grew up with him, saw him have a Pro Bowl season with Chip. There was history.

Of course, Brady was playing incredibly as well. He gave the Patriots a one-point lead with a touchdown pass to Rob Gronkowski with a little more than nine minutes left. That’s when things really got interesting.